A Cloud in My Sight

A Ristuka & Yuiko story

by Aoi Umi Opallene

"It doesn't mean anything for me to be here. Because I'm going to disappear."

"But...life is about the struggle before you disappear. It's about striving. You're not the only one who will disappear, Ritsuka."

We will all eventually disappear.

-Loveless, Volume 2

"'Some people turn sad awfully young...No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.'"

-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

It was the end of the day. A glorious, sun-spattered, breezy late summer's day. But all was still now, and the air hung with the chatter of crickets and classmates, who recounted with joy all of the various activities of the past ten hours. Eleven, including the bus ride.

Most of the children who were milling around one particular campfire, in a fit of boisterous giggles, decided they'd squeeze in one last round of throwing rocks into the lake. Off they went as fast as their tender, small legs could carry them, and their teacher Ms. Shinonome stumbled after them frantically, admonishing them not to go near the lake unsupervised.

This left Ritsuka Aoyagi staring into the campfire, effortlessly still, sporting an expression that was thoroughly unreadable to his best friend in class.

But, she was used to this. Yuiko Hawatari sat beside him, teetering on the edge of her log seat. After swallowing the last bit of a marshmallow treat, she gradually slowed and halted her motion. She tilted her head up to stare at a whispery cloud in the wide, darkening sky, and for once, did not immediately liken its shape to anything else at all. Today, this cloud that might easily have been a bunny or an ocelot shared no features at all with any living creature. It simply hung, dissipating and rearranging somewhere between the earth and the sky.

It was only after several seconds that she noticed that Ritsuka had seemed to take an interest in her. The expression on her face...Was it out of the ordinary? She made a sudden effort to shake her head and smile.

But try as she might, try and again, in this moment, she couldn't get the thought off her mind. All day long, it hadn't been a problem at all. She hadn't even needed to try. She had run, she had swam, she had ducked and rolled and gotten grass stains on her back in a comically staged game of softball. But now...

"Yuiko," Ritsuka said, his attention focused on a leftover piece of food that he'd picked up and begun to gnaw on delicately. "Your ears have looked funny since all those guys left." He nodded toward the lake.

Yuiko started. "R-Really?" She reached up to touch them, in an effort to broadcast that she was only now discovering this herself. In fact, she truly hadn't realized that her ears might betray her mood just as easily as her face.

"Yup. It's true." Ritsuka nodded.

"Oh." Yuiko laughed. "Well, they're a funny thing, aren't they?" She ruffled her own ears, and a chip in her home-manicured fingernails caught some of the light-pink tufts of hair surrounding them. The chip had been caused during the game of softball, but she didn't mind it.

"Ears?" said Ritsuka. "Yeah, I guess."

Yuiko looked down. The silence between them could only be filled for so long by the screeches of the other children eluding Ms. Shinonome's desperate efforts for control down by the lakeside.

She noticed it this time. Her ears refused to stay perky. They flattened themselves softly, without her consent, and she worried that Ritsuka might point it out again.

"Ritsuka-kun?"

"Hm?" Ritsuka was finishing off a graham cracker. A few stray crumbs fell to the ants below.

"Yuiko – I mean, I – read something yesterday." Yuiko loosely gripped a few of her right knuckles with her left hand.

"Oh? Was it interesting?"

She felt her right ear cock further back than her left as she thought about this.

"I read that...Well, I read that..."

Ritsuka's interest was piqued. He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, and turned more toward her. His ears perked ever so slightly forward in anticipation.

"...That everyone goes away someday. Everyone...dies. Yuiko read that everyone dies...someday." Her ears drooped helplessly and she stared at the ground, trying very hard not to cry in front of Ritsuka.

Ritsuka's eyes widened. One ear flattened to the side, but the other remained alert, and attuned to what his quivering classmate might say next.

She didn't say anything.

Ritsuka sat back, not sure how to react. His ears fell into his black mess of hair, wanting somehow to hide away. Was this a time to tell her...about his true self? His other self?

Yuiko breathed in and out, concentrating on not crying.

Ritsuka thought some more. He could tell her that he himself had already encountered this reality. But although it had confronted him, he hadn't yet reconciled with it. Not much at all. Ritsuka was good at pushing things like that out of his mind most of the time. After all, he figured, once his true self returned, that self wouldn't know, and it would be okay again.

Yuiko let a solitary tear drop to the sandy soil next to her feet. She stared into the horizon, too afraid to look at Ritsuka's face.

Ritsuka stared at approximately the same place as Yuiko – the dark-rose pinkish bands of light hovering above the sliver of the sun.

Ritsuka's tail flicked suddenly, unnoticed by Yuiko. It occurred to him that, for Yuiko, this version of the future wouldn't exist. Yuiko would not revert to the innocent state of yesterday, of last year. Yuiko would always have to carry this knowledge, for the rest of her life. Yuiko could only move forward. Now, Ritsuka felt acutely sad. It was his duty to do something to help her feel better. But what could possibly be done? Be said?

"...Yuiko," he started, looking not at her but at an interesting, gnarled tree in the middle distance. "Are you glad that you're here?" He did not show it, but he was genuinely interested in her answer.

Yuiko sniffled. She looked at him and burst, "Of course! I'm with Ms. Shinonome and Yayoi and the others and this is one of the best places in the world for our class trip..."

Ritsuka looked her way out of the corner of his eye and tugged a small, half-grin into existence. He was genuinely amused, as well as intrigued.

Yuiko retracted her gaze sheepishly and followed his gaze instead, to the tree. "I mean, and with Ritsuka."

Silence pervaded for several seconds.

Suddenly, Yuiko clapped her hands together before her mouth. "I know what you're saying, Ritsuka! You're saying that instead of being here with all of you, I could have been living in a different city all my life. I could have had different friends, and a different Mom and a different Dad! Maybe even...In a different country!" Her eyes widened as she began to realize that the possibilities were indeed numerous. More numerous than that.

Ritsuka blinked and tensed lightly, a bit taken aback. He eased into the realization of what it was that Yuiko was realizing. He turned aside, pondering the secret additional layer of implication for himself.

"I could have had brown hair!" Yuiko proclaimed in awe. "I could have been born as a boy!" She giggled, and stuck out her tongue in rejection of the idea.

This thought hung in the air for almost half a minute before they turned to each other with sudden gravitas and uttered, "I could have not been born at all" in the same moment.

The sun was now below the horizon, and a wind from the lake washed a chill over the two. Yuiko shivered.

Ritsuka stood, defiant. He faced the lake and stared down the distance in appraisal. He inhaled deeply, exhaled, and turned back around, satisfied.

He took his seat gingerly, renewed, if only for so long – Right now, he knew it would be long enough. He offered a camp blanket to his companion, oddly relishing the gripping, moving, and ungripping motion of his hand as he passed it into her grateful, delicate hands. He flexed his fingers after handing it off, and was utterly pleased to absorb the reality of their elegant jointedness.

Yuiko noticed, as she wrapped the blanket about her shoulders and arms, that its texture was subtly unlike any blanket she'd felt before. It had a soft roughness that would be difficult to describe should one wish to, but for her part, Yuiko did not wish to at all. She only let her mind decode the matrix of pinpoints that made up her young skin's sense of touch.

Tomorrow, I'll pay more attention to my legs when I run down the hillside to the lake, thought Ritsuka.

Tomorrow, I'll notice what it feels like when I brush my hair into pigtails, thought Yuiko.

"Yuiko," said Ritsuka. "I'm glad I'm here, too." His left ear, which had been cocked at a side angle, was brought radially forward: A smile his whole body felt.

Yuiko also smiled, full-bodied. "Really?"

"I mean, I could've been on the moon right now," Ritsuka continued casually. "But I'd already signed up for the class trip," he declared matter-of-factly.

Yuiko laughed.

"Ritsuka-kun," she inquired, "What do you think those clouds think when they look at us down here?" She pointed to some stray wisps hugging the gloamy horizon.

Ritsuka blinked. "They don't. They're clouds."

Yuiko sighed, but giggled again. "Yuiko used to think that clouds were lucky, getting to change their shapes and go all over the sky. Yuiko thought, That must be fun."

Ritsuka considered the wispy clouds, straight-faced.

"But now," Yuiko declared, "I know I'm happy to stay right here!" She grinned, eyes closed and feet idly bumping each other on the ground. "And besides, they disappear so fast, without ever staying anywhere at all..."

"Yeah..." mused Ritsuka in an undertone, allowing the force of the statement to catch up.

Before he could get any further, the gaggle of students came stampeding up the bank, herded by their shrieking teacher.

Prepared to breathe fire, Ms. Shinonome diverted the girl half of the stampede in one direction and the boy half in another. It was time to settle into the tents for the night.

Ritsuka and Yuiko stood, poised to follow their groups quickly or face consequences. But in parting they shared a meaningful look: There was nothing but clear, easy sleep to look forward to in spite of the threat of dissipation.

The next day of fishing, hiking and leaf collecting couldn't arrive soon enough for their small beating hearts.